


Absolve Me (Dissolve Me)

by killuatrash (Epic_F_Awesomesauce)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Murder Mystery, Serial Killer, graphic use of blood, multiple POVs, over-the-top use of blood, this is a bit gruesome so please read with caution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 13:09:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17366450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epic_F_Awesomesauce/pseuds/killuatrash
Summary: Five years after Harry Potter disappeared from the Wizarding World he is discovered at the crime scene of a violent and gruesome murder. It is up to Auror partners Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy, CSI technician Pansy Parkinson, and wizarding solicitor and political adviser Hermione Granger to prove Harry's innocence. The best way to do this? Find the true perpetrator and bring him to justice.





	Absolve Me (Dissolve Me)

**Author's Note:**

> My summaries are shit I know, but I am actually very proud of this work. Hopefully I will be inspired to actually finish it. I'm aiming for an update every two weeks. Also, this is all unbeta'd, so please message me with any mistakes and/or typos. And if someone would like to volunteer to beta, I wouldn't say no!  
> Title is taken from and based off of "Dissolve Me" by alt-j, one of the songs I listened to on rotation while writing this. (For full song list message me or post in the comments section.)

It wasn’t every day that you made the arrest of the most powerful wizard of the age, but incredibly Draco didn’t feel proud of his achievement whatsoever.

 

If the circumstances had been different, he supposed that maybe he would. Maybe if he had been breaking up a drunken brawl, or if he uncovered some foolish plot to try to tarnish Draco’s good name (which, to be fair, wouldn’t have been hard to do, considering that Draco didn’t really _have_ a good name left to tarnish), but as it stood, it wasn’t pleasant at all. In fact, it was quite disgusting, which was mainly due to the blood.

 

Walking into the abandoned little apartment was like walking into a meat locker that had been filled with rotting flesh for at least a couple of weeks. The stench was enough to make a lesser man vomit. Draco, being slightly better than that, only gagged horribly and considering just turning back. The smell was overwhelming and putrid and really made him question his choice to become an auror in the first place. The smell of vomit was also mixed into the putrid smell of rotted blood because of the people who had discovered the body, and the few junior aurors who had gone in ahead of him to try and take a sneak peek.

 

 _Bet they regret that now,_ Draco thought nastily. There were always a few junior aurors who tried to prove themselves by going in ahead of him, as if they would be able to take one look at the scene and undermine his entire career, usurping the Death Eater of his ill-deserved throne.

 

He took a hesitant step into the apartment, wondering if he would be able to walk in without vomiting. Upon taking another step he found that he would not, and turned back around so that he could cast a quick bubble-head charm. The bubble-head charm was most commonly used to help people breathe water, but it had a highly popular second use amongst aurors and those others who worked in environments that smelled utterly disgusting, such as the crime scene technicians who assisted in all investigations such as this. Generally a bubble-head charm would make sure that the caster was given a fresh supply of air to breathe; filtered air. This made it invaluable for those whom, like Draco, didn’t particularly want to breathe the stench of stale death.

 

He took a few careful steps inside, making sure to mentally take stock of the space. The apartment was dusty and decrepit. The property records showed it as having been abandoned for ten years now, and it certainly looked it.

 

The front door led into a small kitchen with a multitude of cabinets that he imagined must have once been nice but now, with the paint chipping and the hinges and handles rusted, looked rather sad. The floors were in much the same space, made up of dark wood floorboards that creaked and cracked ominously with every step. He made a fervent wish that the place was structurally sound.

 

The kitchen had a little bar with what looked like the remnants of what was once a meal upon it; cutlery was laid out and serving bowls with food still crusted in them lay sadly next to a pile of moth-eaten napkins. Just past this, through a little hallway, Draco could see what must have once been a living or dining room. It was empty but for a small fireplace in the corner and windows in both of the walls. The view outside was drab, showing the dark gray sky and the even darker gray roofing tiles of the apartment below. It was covered in thick carpet in a color that must once have been white but was now a sickly gray-brown color.

 

It was this little room that was the main scene of the murder. Normally, Draco would describe a murder scene as blood spatters upon a normal room, but this was a rather special case, seeing as how it was incredibly hard to see the room beneath the blood. It was not even just spatters, as was normally the case; arcing across the walls and soaking into the carpets. No, this had been purposefully spread across the walls and floors, as if someone had been trying to redecorate in blood. It looked more like the inside of a vein than the inside of a living area, and even though he was wearing the bubble-head charm he still felt queasy.

 

The blood wasn’t even the worst of it, because there was also the body to take into consideration: splayed in the middle of the room like a broken chess piece, she was mostly pieces and parts than one singular whole. Her head wasn’t even there, and Draco couldn’t decide if he’d rather find it somewhere else in the apartment or nowhere at all. Her limbs were tangled up like so much discarded barbed wire, and as he took another step forward he felt something crunch underfoot. When he looked he saw that it was the remnants of an old dried up finger.

 

A retching noise came from behind him and he turned to find his auror partner in the doorway. Ronald Bilius Weasley paused a moment on the jamb to dry heave, Red hair glowing even in the feeble light, then backed away just as Draco had so that he could cast a bubble-head charm of his own.

 

“This is disgusting,” Ron said, looking even paler than usual and his voice sounding as if it was coming from the inside of a fishbowl. The one drawback of a bubble-head was that it distorted your voice, but that was a small price to pay for clean, fresh air.

 

“I’ve never seen anything so horrible,” Draco agreed, turning back to the living room and taking another step forward, careful to look down lest he step on any more fingers.

 

“I have,” Ron said. “Seeing as how I lived with Fred and George while they were still working on setting up Wheezes. If St. Mungo’s had had a rewards system we would have got free visits once a month.”

 

Draco snorted, then turned back around to look at Ron. “Watch your step,” he said. “I just stepped on a finger.”

 

Ron pulled a face and began to walk carefully across the floor.

 

Many people had wondered at the odd partnership he and Ron made, considering the insults they had thrown back and forth at each other throughout their school years, and the fact that they had fought on different sides of a civil war. It was true that in the beginning he and Ron had not got on well. In fact, they had got on quite terribly, barely able to solve a simple graffiti case without trying to punch the living daylights out of each other. It had taken weeks of stilted, careful conversation, and one drunken night spent at a shabby muggle pub for them to forge the bond they now had, but afterwards they had come out as friends, if reluctant ones at that.

 

“What are we thinking is the cause of death?” Ron asked, taking in the kitchen in the same way Draco had, trying to make sure he could recall every detail in his mind at some undisclosed later date.

 

Draco gestured toward the room. He was now standing on the edge where the hardwood floor met the carpet. This was where the blood began. “Take a guess,” he said. His eyes scanned the room once more, trying to decipher what color the walls must have been before they were coated in blood.

 

Ron whistled as he came up behind Draco. “Wow,” he said. “D’you think they brought in extra blood or something? This seems like too much for one person.”

 

“The average-sized woman has about nine pints of blood,” Draco said, squinting around the room. It was terrible dark in here, and as far as he could tell there was no light switch.

 

“It looks like all nine pints are on the walls,” Ron said. He took a careful step over the threshold between hardwood and thick carpet. Ron was the more detail-oriented of the two, while Draco liked to scan everything as a whole to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Ron would examine everything from the type of wallpaper to the fibre of the carpet. Draco would take in the blood spatters, the overturned furniture, the position of the body, and from there he would try to visualize what had happened. In this case, however, there were no blood spatters, and there was no furniture. There was just a mangled body—if it could even be called that—and blood-drenched walls.

 

“The windows aren’t covered,” Draco pointed out. “Not by curtains or blood.”

 

Ron looked up and nodded. “Maybe they wanted to make sure that no one could tell from the outside that there was something going on. I imagine that if I was walking down the street and saw windows painted over in blood I would think something odd was afoot.”

 

“So he has the criminal sophistication to take basic precautions, such as making sure his saveragery can’t be detected from the streets below.”

 

Ron nodded. “And he picked a place that’s been abandoned for what, five years? That’s no accident. He clearly knew that no one would come a-looking.”

 

“What makes you think it’s a ‘he’?” asked a voice from the doorway. Pansy Parkinson stepped through, large black camera case slung over her shoulder and a disgusted look slung across her face. Her hair was pulled back into a long high ponytail, and her bangs were cut low across her forehead. She was wearing an outfit that was supposed to look like a pantsuit, though it was just a pair of dark trousers, a gray button-down, and a cardigan that had been styled to look like a blazer. She, too, had put on a bubble-head charm, and she had clearly had not waited until she could smell the crime scene to apply it. There was something about men that made them want to see if they could withstand the assault on their senses, as if it would prove they were strong. Pansy cared nothing for such things; she knew she didn’t have to prove her strength.

 

“No woman would be able to do something as horrible as this,” Ron said with certainty, crouching down to take a closer look at the body. Behind him Draco could hear as Pansy unbuttoned her camera case and stepped just close enough that she could take pictures of the room.

 

“I beg to differ,” Draco said, taking a hesitant step onto the blood-dyed carpet. “My aunt Bellatrix.”

 

Ron wrinkled his nose, though he had to agree. Draco had lived with Bellatrix and had seen the things she’d done. To say that she was disturbed was to sell her short, as she sometimes seemed even more disapassionate than the Dark Lord himself.

 

“Move,” Pansy said from behind him, tapping on his left hip in a way that meant, _Move to the left you useless sack of bones._ Draco did as he was told, stepping to the left so that she could have a better view of the room.

 

“You’re right,” she said shortly as her eyes traced the room; the fireplace, the windows, the blood, and the dried up husk that had once been a person. “No woman could have done this.”

 

“I wonder if you could even call the person that did this _human_ ,” Draco said. He looked up to study the ceiling; there was blood there, too.

 

Ron pulled a pair of disposable gloves out of his pocket and put them on, then cast an impervious charm on top of them. He was quite the germaphobe for someone who worked in homicide. He reached one careful hand forward to shift what must have once been a shoulder.

 

“There’s a note,” he said shortly. He bent forward carefully to pick it up, holding it up to the light by just a corner. “It’s just a normal sheet of muggle notebook paper,” he said. “‘What’s lighter without a head?’ And the writings all fucked up, letters backwards and half of them uppercase. He’s scratched out the letters in ‘head’ so many times that he’s nearly ripped through it.”

 

Pansy moved closer to Ron so that she could take a picture of the note, then began to photograph the body. Draco began to walk the perimeter of the room, noting the spots against the baseboard where the blood hadn’t quite spread. There were also several spots more throughout the room where the carpet had not been entirely soaked through, most of them around the walls and the carpeted hallways which led to the other rooms.

 

“I think he _did_ use only her blood,” he said. He pointed out the spots to the other two. “Look here, see how the blood isn’t as thick? I think he ran out. I think he would have _liked_ to entirely coat everything in the room but didn’t have enough blood to.”

 

Pansy wrinkled her nose in distaste, then moved toward him so that she could photograph the places he was talking about. “Who’s up for getting a stiff drink after this? I need something to wash the taste out of my mouth that comes from seeing shit like this.”

 

Draco grimaced. “I would, but I’ve dinner with my mother.”

 

“Urgh,” Ron said. He was lifting up other parts of the body now, though “body” may have been too permissive a term. “I’d cancel if it were my mum. Don’t think I’d be able to look at her dinner the same way after this.”

 

“I don’t think I’ll be able to eat for a week after this,” said Pansy, which was her way of expressing her agreement.

  
Draco began to make his way around the room toward the little hallway that extended from the right wall, keeping to the edges of the floor so that he could examine the way the blood was spread on the carpet. The closer he got to the hallway the thinner it became.

 

“I’m going to look in the bedrooms,” Draco called toward Pansy and Ron, wanted someone to know where he was going in case the floor gave way.

 

“Alright,” Ron said. He was still studying the body, Pansy flitting around him and taking pictures like it was some sort of sick photo shoot. Draco half expected to hear her instructing him to place the remnants in different positions.

 

The small hallway opened up to another hallway and a small closet, which was right in front of him. Using his wand he opened the door. Upon finding nothing inside but dust he carried on down the hall.

 

Just past the closet was a small bathroom, also entirely empty. There was not even a shower curtain over the large, clawfoot tub, though the floor was covered in the glass shards that had once belonged in the mirror above the sink.

 

Past the bathroom the hallway stretched long and foreboding in front of him, ending in an old but sturdy-looking wooden door. The floor had gone back to hardwood here, an interesting (and terrible) design choice, and dust bunnies floated along as if by themselves, moved with every step he took.

 

The farther along the hallway he walked the more he felt as if he should turn back, that whatever lay ahead was not something he wanted to see. He soldiered on, thinking that if he could face what had waited for him in that bloody living room he could face whatever lay in here.

 

He cast a couple of spells on the door to see if there were any traps lying ahead, then used his want to carefully nudge it open. A gust of hot air blew out as he did so, causing the dust bunnies to blow back down the hall as if fleeing some unknowable evil. He desperately wanted to call for Ron, more for emotional support than because he needed more backup. He dismissed this urge, more because he knew Pansy would make fun of him than for any other reason.

 

He stepped slowly and carefully the rest of the way down the hall and across the threshold of what must have been intended to be a bedroom. It looked much the same as the living room; small, carpeted, with walls painted an ugly shade of blue-gray. Straight ahead there was a window, same in the wall to his right. To his left there was a double sliding door, which he assumed was a closet. There was no blood here, and again no furniture, so after a quick scan of the room with both eyes and wand he made his way to the closet. Upon opening it he found a horrendous sight.

**Author's Note:**

> And there you have it! Chapter one! Next chapter is from Ron's point of view. The chapters will switch between various points of view willy nilly, depending on who I feel can best tell the next part of the story. It will mostly be from Draco, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Pansy's points of view, and possibly the killer, though I haven't quite decided.


End file.
